Google Rolls Out Consumer Ratings in AdWords

Google announced yesterday the rollout of their new AdWords feature: Consumer Ratings Annotations. The new feature, which is being rolled out over the next few days, provides search engine users information meant to improve your ad campaign performance by instilling trust in your potential visitors.

The New Format

“Over the next few days, we’ll be rolling out consumer ratings annotations, a new format for search ads that provides detailed consumer opinion data,” wrote Shreyas Doshi, Google AdWords’ Group Product Manager in the official AdWords blog.

The new ad format will display the most highly rated aspects of your business as part of your ad. This can be found under the ad copy, as you can see in the example given by Google below:

The new AdWords format, featuring Consumer Ratings Annotations

Clicking on the ratings section of the ad takes users to a more detailed report of your ratings. The information will come from Google Consumer Surveys. Have a look at the detailed report below:

Detailed consumer ratings report from Google Consumer Surveys

In other versions released by Google, you’ll see “More Ratings” beside the ratings already displayed in your ad. This leads to the same consumer ratings report pictured above.

Increasing AdWords CTR

According to Doshi, the tests they’ve conducted with beta advertisers showed an average of 10% increase in ad click-through rates. This is because of the trust factor that is instilled in users.

“Google Consumer Surveys provides a controlled platform for sampling consumer opinion, helping to avoid some of the potential biases and risks with other types of open-to-everyone review platforms,” Doshi explained in the blog. “Each rating is based on at least hundreds of completed surveys, with the average above 1000. We plan to regularly refresh the survey data to keep the ratings current.”

This new format is part of Google’s campaign for transparency in order to increase consumer trust. Google will be rolling out Consumer Ratings Annotations for several hundred advertisers in the US, the UK and Canada. Other advertisers outside the territories currently covered who are interested in displaying customer ratings in their ads may contact Google directly for assistance.

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